The New York (16 page)

This diatribe seemed to have exhausted him and he reverted to Spanish.

—- You, I hold you, responsible for the safety and the well-being of those twenty-four boys who will go to the spring camp in Florida. You and the government. If you harm those boys or let the fanatics in Miami harm them, then it will be on your head. I will follow you wherever you try to hide, whatever hole you crawl into, and I will deal with you. Remember that Fidel is watching you, Señor,

This did not set well with me at all.

And then I thought of Charlene warning me about this.

And Sid. When I called Sid the next morning after my night with Charlene, he was practically hysterical and told me I was crazy to go to Cuba in George's place. Funny how people who give me advice all say the same things.

I tried to soothe him.

— El Presidente, I want you to know the health and welfare of your ball players, of my teammates, is a prime concern to me personally.

— I know it is. It has to be.

That was it. That last line was it. He turned away like he was dismissing a waiter and moved back across the room with this gaggle of people around him and left me and Mr. Martinez alone with just a security guard to glare at us. What had I done to offend anyone? Did Castro really think when Ms boys played their first game in the Bigs that someone wouldn't brushback a hitter? How was I responsible for that?

I went back to the hotel and took another shower. The water ran slow, but I managed to get wet enough to stand in front of the air conditioner until I started to feel shivery all over. Then I toweled off and tried to call George in New York. For the third straight day, the lines were overloaded, the operator told me. I thanked her and went to bed. I never did get to sleep that night, which explains why I was so groggy in the morning.

The players looked groggy, too, assembled with their bags at the airport. It must have been a fine howdedo, their last night in Havana. I felt a little sympathy for them — they were just kids going to America where everyone spoke a different language and people drove tiny new cars.

But not too much sympathy. Especially for Raul. He was clinging to this girl like he was going to Vietnam to fight or something, and I thought that was a little melodramatic. She covered him with kisses and she was sure something to look at. So I looked at her until Orestes, the catcher, came over and asked me what I thought I was staring at.

I might have to take shit from Castro, but I was damned if I had to take it from Orestes.

— What do you think? Lovely young thang over there with Raul.

— That is his intended, Señor.

— I hope he has good intentions.

— Are you insulting that woman, Señor? Or my friend, Raul?

— I ain't insulting nobody. I never insult anyone this early in the morning. I could make an exception in your case, however.

— You better watch yourself, Señor.

— You mind your own business, Orestes.

He just stood his ground, glaring at me, and I looked away, back to the girl and Raul, just to see what he would do. But he didn't do anything. There were security guards everywhere in the almost empty airport and Mr. Martinez was nowhere to be seen. I wanted to say good-bye to him; he had been kind to a stranger.

Instead, we boarded a plane.

The girl hanging on Raul walked him across the tarmac and then a soldier barred her from going any farther. I thought Raul wouldn't go any farther either, but I wasn't going to say anything. This was George's show and I was just the tour guide.

We walked up the ramp to the twin-engine prop job and Raul made it halfway up when the girl cried out to him.

— I love you, beloved. I love you and I miss you already. I love you. 

He turned and I thought he would bolt back down the ramp steps, but

there was a security guard standing at the bottom. He looked at the guard. The guard shook his head slowly and I guess Raul got the message. He trudged up the last steps like he was walking to the chair.

The plane bumped up and out of Cuba and I looked out the window. The countryside was green and there were mountains in the east. I thought I saw Guantanamo Bay but, never having seen it on the ground, I sure couldn't swear to it from the air.

We touched down at Mexico City an hour and twenty minutes later. We went through customs fairly fast and there were TV cameras but they were kept at a distance. I thought I saw Mr. Baxter, George's State Department friend, bet I might have been mistaken.

We picked up a guy named Romero there. He wore a tropical suit already plastered with sweat and a dirty white shirt and tie. I asked him who he was and he said nothing in a particular way of saying nothing — he just stared at me and then walked past me. He sat down in a front seat of the plane and did a head count on the players. They saw him. So he was big brother, I thought, the chaperone. I felt relieved to have the chaperone along; whatever happened would be his problem, not mine. That's the way I thought then.

The plane lifted out of the smog bowl of Mexico City (which would make L.A. look clean) and headed sort of north and east toward Lauderdale.

We touched down in a shade over two hours.

Then the fun really began.

The New York Yanquis. Papers everywhere were calling es that.

George didn't like that part of it, but he liked the publicity just fine. For a club with twenty-four rookies and one over-the-hiller (me), he was getting more ink than the Bulls in Michael Jordan days.

Sparky Hershberg was back as manager, still without a clue in Spanish, and Sam Ortiz, the clubhouse manager, was now promoted to sit in the dugout with him or stand by the sidelines and interpret for him.

The young warriors from Havana treated Sam with mild contempt for a few days until they found out that getting along with the clubhouse man is more important than getting along with the owner.

Sam worked it by first showering them with the luxuries of the Bigs. Big, fluffy, clean towels by the dozen. Locker space. Soap and shampoo for showers. Taking care of their bags, getting them to the right rooms at the hotel, making sure the icebox was stocked with mineral water and Coke and beer.

Then he started punishing the guys who patronized him. Orestes learned first when Sam stranded him at the practice field and Orestes had to walk back to the hotel, asking directions most humbly of anyone who looked like he might know Spanish. There are not a lot of people in Fort Lauderdale who look like they might know Spanish, and those who do are generally the hired help. Orestes was pulling his Spanish grandee on them and they resented it; they might have to take that kind of shit from Anglos who paid their paycheck but be damned if they were going to take it from another greaser.

Orestes got the idea.

Protestors were there from Miami from the git-go, but the cops handled it because there were plenty of FBI guys around, too. The FBI guys walked around in suits with white shirts and ties and talked into their lapels a lot and wore hearing aids. It was all very distracting between that and no one speaking English and the curious but unfriendly national media coming down every day to see the monkeys in the zoo.

I was working on Ryan Shawn's problems, which were several. Raul had been right. Something was wrong with my slider. I stayed on the field longer than anyone else just to play catch with Billy Bacon, the pitching coach.

At night, after a couple of beers and a steak and salad, I went back to my room and immersed myself in television English. All that Spanish I was using day after day was taking a toll on me.

We did an exhibition with the White Sox.

The Chicagos were mean about everything. The pitcher threw so many inside that the umpire — it was Flaherty — had to go out to the mound and explain it was only a fucking exhibition game.

The Sox gave us the dog. No reason to slap someone twice with the ball on a steal of second. They had beat Tio, but when Tio stood up to dust off his togs, the second baseman slapped him with the gloved ball again for good luck. This pissed off Tío and he said something in Spanish and the next thing you knew, everyone was out of the dugout.

Major league fighting is not like hockey in that no one ever gets hurt, unless it's by accident. Flaherty threw out Tio and the Sox second baseman and me. That left it for Sam to interpret for Sparky. I don't know what Sam said to Sparky, but it wasn't much good. We came out on the losing end, but the Sox wouldn't let it go, they were yelling insults at us all the way off the field. Orestes wanted to go back and fight, but I shoved him hard into the tunnel and told him no one paid extra for a fight, this wasn't hockey. They were teaching the Cubanos a thing or two, the fucking Sox sons of bitches. Nothing personal except it was all personal. Even the Panamanian shortstop on the Sox joined in on dogging the Cubans.

The Cubans got their dander up at last and took it out on the Indians, who came over to play us a friendly one in the afternoon.

The Cleveland tribe was just its usual lackadaisical self with it being so early in spring training and them thinking that in a few short weeks they would be freezing their cookies off up in northern Ohio,

Raul came up in the first inning because I had him batting number three. I say “I” because I was working through Sparky, who deeply resented ending up his career as chief cook and bottle washer to a bench of Communist foreigners. He got himself in such a funk that he refused to talk to anyone except me. And he only talked to me to complain about what George had done to him. Sparky was becoming even more of a pain in the ass than he usually was.

Raul took a strike and looked insulted and complained to the umpire. The ump didn't speak Spanish and Raul didn't speak English but the ump got the gist of it and warned him. He said it loud, the way you have to talk to foreigners.

“You wanna get thrown outta this game, Commie?”

Now that was unfair. I said to Sparky, “You gotta go out and bitch for Raul”

“Raul?”

“The kid at the plate.”

“I thought that one was Orestes.”

“Orestes bats eighth.”

“I can't keep these assholes straight.”

Strike two. Raul just glared at the umpire this time.

The next one was high and dry. Raul reared back and whipped his wrists and the bat came around faster than a chopper blade. Splat. I told you about that sound a home run makes when it's clean? It made that sound.

The ball tore a line through the middle of the infield and the pitcher saved his own life by hugging the dirt. Ever see a sweet liner about six feet off the ground just blazing ahead? The ball just soared from there, like it was launched from a catapult. Just kept climbing into that lazy, hazy Florida sunshine sky. The center fielder ran back to the fence for exercise because everyone in the place knew where that ball was going.

Raul, the crazy son of a bitch, dogged the Cleveland pitcher, barely trotting around the bases, practically walking. And he wasn't looking at the ball, just staring at the pitcher, putting the sign on him.

I want to skip ahead now to the next time Raul came up. Same pitcher, same game. This time he took a tumble in the dirt, which is normal for a first pitch after giving up a home run the last time. Just routine meanness. Then Raul spit — first time I seen him spit — and waited. Didn't take a practice swing or nothing. Just waited. The pitcher
—
it was Sanderson — did a big windup, all arms and legs, and laid it down a little too low. Raul swung and popped a line down the first base side. He rounded first when any fool could see he only had a blazing single. But he didn't stop and didn't listen and the right fielder grabbed the ball on the second hop and flung it into second where the second baseman was waiting.

He shouldn't have been.

Raul slid into second about the time the ball got there and about the same moment that Raul's spikes tore a chunk out of the second baseman's calf. He went down with a yowl and dropped the ball and then all hell broke loose.

The shortstop for Cleveland was offended by the slide and told Raul he was a dirty Communist cocksucker but, again, he wasted it because it was in English.

Raul grinned at him, and at the second baseman writhing around the vicinity of the bag, and that was the end of that.

The shortstop charged him and the umpire backed off so that he could more clearly assess the carnage to come. As is the rule of baseball, any fight must immediately be joined by everyone on both teams. I looked out and it seemed a long way to second. I try never to be the first guy to pile on because punches are still being thrown at that point. I like to jog to a fight in a nonchalant way and find someone easy at the outside of the fray to jump on.

I turned and saw Sparky just sitting there and I said something like “Hey, Sparky, let's go fight.”

Sparky just looked at me. “Fuck those greasers, I ain't fighting for them.”

Well, the old rah-rah spirit had to be upheld so I upheld it myself by trotting out to the infield just as Raul and the shortstop had disappeared under a pile of bodies.

The ugly thing was that the Cubans didn't seem to understand the rules of combat. They thought a fight was really a fight.

They were kicking, gouging, and biting up a storm, and the home plate ump, Bill Donnelly, shouted to me, “Somebody is gonna get seriously hurt out of this.”

So I started shouting in Spanish.

— Stop fighting, stop it! 

Nada.

— The police have machine guns! 

That started slowing it.

— They are going to kill everyone! 

It was still rolling but calming a bit.

— Heads down, they're getting ready to shoot!

Well, sanity more or less got the upper hand and when the bodies were cleared up, nobody was really that badly hurt except the Cleveland backup catcher, who got a finger in his eye. Everyone got thrown out of the game, of course, and letters were sent to the league office and the newspapers made too much of a fuss about it. But the reaction, I saw, was already setting in. Say what you want bad about Americans, they hate being seen as unfair and the way the other teams were dogging the Cuban kids, well, it just wasn't baseball. There was even an editorial about this in the
Miami Herald
and ! thought it augured good for us. After all, the Cuban kids couldn't help it if Doctor Castro and George Bremenhaven were cooking up secret deals —- they were just kids who wanted to play ball, and what was more American than that?